Seeking Clarity
by Progenitus
Summary: [Sorcery!] It wasn't true, any of it, all of it, but you had trouble remembering. (A prequel and sequel of sorts for the female protagonist, including her relationship with Flanker the assassin, Jann the minimete, and the weight of her future, or lack thereof.)


Background on the source material: you choose to be a male/female protagonist from Analand, on a mission to go to the tyrannical Archmage and retrieve the stolen Crown of Kings, an artifact that controls the will of those around the wearer. In the first installment, you can meet an assassin called Flanker (tall and dressed in black, total Westley type), and if you best him, you can choose to kill or spare him. If you spare him, he shows up in the next three installments of Sorcery!, and in one of the endings, he joins you to kill the Archmage and returns home with you. Certain canonical romantic inclinations are possible to both genders.

The specific scene that I'm addressing is when you approach the Archmage at the end without Jann and he uses the Crown and makes you doubt your quest. The Archmage says:

 _"You have been under the spell for some time. I can imagine how it began: most likely there was a day, in Analand, perhaps near the wall, when you woke up and your will was not your own. And since then you have been compelled to march here, to do me harm. ..._ _You introduced yourself as the Analander. My friend, are you truly so far gone that you do not even know your own name? Answer me this. How many sisters do you have? What colour are your mother's eyes? How old are you? You shouldn't need to think to answer."_

I, as a player, actually panicked a little; even though I _knew_ the Archmage was evil—human/creature experiments!—I still started doubting, much like being under the influence of the Crown.

That got me thinking though: the Analander deserves an origin story and closure, so here it is.

* * *

 **Seeking Clarity**

It wasn't true, it just wasn't. Any of it; all of it. It was the effect of the Crown, and the Archmage was distilled evil, but it still scared you shitless that for a moment you just didn't _know_ how many sisters you had and what the colour of your mother's eyes was.

So when Flanker asked you, "You never told me about you," (well it wasn't a question, but it was), you were startled. He was never inquisitive, even when you felt like he had an urge to be.

You were in a local tavern, transitioning from evening to night, the stars slowly emerging from the sun's harsh glare; you could always feel the pull of magic when this happened. You called over the waitress for a refill of your mead, before even biting into the fish fillet, but you know Flanker would not be judging you. It was nostalgic, staying in a hole-in-the-wall tavern, people half-heartedly playing dice all about, sharing an over-cooked meal with Flanker. Something about taverns made you feel like you didn't know this man fully, at all, yet.

"Where did you grow up?" you had asked him, the same question that you had asked three nights in a row now. You were on the road again with him and Jann. Jann was already upstairs in the one room you rented, probably snoring faintly, his entire tiny body vibrating to produce disproportionately loud noises for such a small minimite. It felt like you were on that old quest again, weary and on the verge of being broken all the time, but a chance encounter (was it chance?) with the assassin always put you back in a good mood.

"I haven't told you," he responded this night, closing both hands around an empty tankard, his slender wrists slipping out of his black sleeves. You withheld the urge to reach out, to feel once again the familiar wrists in your hand, your thumb and middle finger just touching wrapped around the joint, the sharp rise of the triangular fibrocartilage complex covering the base of his ulna bone (you were a good swordswoman and you knew your human anatomy well) fitting into the centre of your palm snugly. You gulped by reflex. "But," he went on after a short pause, "you never told me about yourself either."

Touché. Once upon a time you were a chatterbox, but life had weaned that habit from you. You hadn't ever said anything to him, or Jann, or anybody (except that one random stranger that you accosted in a drunken stupor years and years ago, but then you heard that the same week he got stabbed by some thieving kid in the thigh with a smashed bottle and bled to death on the street).

So you found the words within you.

Your home was in Vasil, on the outskirts of Gummport city, in the Far Analand. It was a beautiful little place: Pa was a blacksmith and Ma cared for the greenhouse, which brought in far more gold than Pa's smithy, although Pa was considered a master smith and Ma cooed over his kitchen knives. (Ma would have loved Flanker's assassin sword, but really it was worlds above the type Pa used to make.) To the left of your house was a furnace, perpetual and rhythmic clanks of iron during the day, and to the right was the lushness of exotic plants. You were well off in the area, so much so that whenever you went into Gummport, you didn't felt intimidated like your friends. (Cities like Kharé were inconceivable in your youth, and you almost wished that you never had to see its likes.) Your house was a ten minutes' run to the lake, and you loved swimming in Lake Libra. It was large, and on windy days so choppy that it looked like the foamy head of Pa's ale. It had no bottom, the local kids said, and your brother Ewen told you if you dived deep enough, you could get to the other side of the world, which you took as truth when you were twelve and almost drowned.

You had one sister and two brothers: your eldest siblings Avenie and Alanig were twins, and Ewen was two years younger than them. You didn't come along until years later, when they were all broaching adolescence. Alanig had an accident with his knee when you were five, so you didn't remember the incident well, only that it involved a horse and a lot of tears. It took out his future as a blacksmith, being unable to stand for long, but you never thought of your big brother—so broad shouldered, taking up more space in a room than he physically did—as anything akin to a cripple. You were so used to his limp and all the adults were so well versed in masking any reaction to his 'condition' that by the age you had consistent memories, it seemed that a bad knee was just a part of who Alanig was, like his perfect blue eyes, or the grimness around his resting mouth, or the way his laughter hitched in the back of his throat. Perhaps that was why he was always so solemn and responsible. (You were inappropriately reminded of Alanig when you met Sh'houri, the elder of the Hoofborn village: heavy, with some sort of burden or knowledge.) You were always bad with choices—apple or roast meat, the stalls or the tents first, left or right at the fork, use SUS or conserve stamina, YAP or RAP spells—but Alanig was the sort to always deliver swift and decisive action. In a way, Alanig was the one on that quest, for your decisions were what you thought Alanig's would have been.

Your sister Avenie was known to be the second most beautiful girl in the town, and indeed the whole Far Analand as far as you were concerned. You wished she and you were closer, but she never liked you—she loved you (probably; she never said and you never asked and it wasn't like you could ask _now_ ), but she disliked the way you screamed and ran and made a mess out of everything, and you disliked how shiny her hair was. (It would be easy to pretend—now with your weathered skin and sandpaper hands—that you never cared about hair and dresses and full eyelashes, but it would be a lie, and you know after all this time how important the truth was.) Pa wanted her betrothed by fifteen, but she refused because none of the boys in the area were good enough for her (which was true). You had scoffed at the way her dresses swished and her smile dimpled, but more than once, you had imagined yourself to be Avenie when trying to worm your way out of a bad situation. The city guard doubted if you were a fellow guard, or the werewolves questioning why you were going the opposite way? Well, you would just channel Avenie. For just a moment, you would resurrect Avenie within yourself. You don't quite have the lightning eyes or the private candlelight framing your face that Avenie always seemed to conjure, but your tactic worked. Beauty, Avenie had once told you after coming home too drunk from the pie maker's son's party, was just believing you're beautiful.

As full of character as the twins were though, the single most important figure in your life was Ewen. As the youngest daughter, before the age of seven, your place was always on Ewen's shoulder, squirming and happily tugging on his loose dark locks. Pa used to tease you for never walking by yourself and Ma disapproved mildly, but Ewen could never say no to you. Even after you outgrew his neck, he always brought up the embarrassing story when he met your dates for the first time, to your dismay. You wished you didn't outgrow your habit so quickly now. Ma used to get mad at Ewen, saying he was wasting his life, forging one day and baking the next, taking no apprenticeship or relationship seriously—and you would always throw yourself in front of Ewen, your body hardly even eclipsing half of his torso but somehow it felt like protection. Nonsense, you used to tell Ma, Ewen practically raised you when she was absent, drawing a cloud of guilt over Ma's face and a kiss from Ewen to your temple. 'My champion,' he whispered lowly to the back of your head. But it was true: Ewen taught you how to read, how to ride, how to swim, how to pluck tasty herbs from the backyard so that Ma wouldn't know, how to tell what kind of shapes the clouds were, how to battle mosquitos in the summer, how to glide on ice in the winter, how to climb trees and what the sweetest apples looked like. He was the most magical person out of anybody you knew in Far Analand, in the most literal sense, for he had a knack for magic. It wasn't a lot, and it certainly wasn't useful (perhaps beyond getting hickeys, which Ewen had a lot of), but he could make the leaves dance in the autumn and the water sing in the morning. There was no sorcerer to teach him, but Ewen didn't want to be a sorcerer. He was built for physical labour but he hated dirt and sweat. He didn't want to be anything. (And in a sense, he got what he wanted.)

Your Ma's eyes were blue like the colour of hope in the skies. The skin on her thumb and the side of her forefingers was always tinged with green and orange from leaves and blossoms. People looked at her petite frame and blue eyes (the ones that Alanig inherited) and thought her calm and gentle, but really Pa was the calm and gentle one, despite his thick frame and sooty palms. You got Pa's hazel eyes and near-black hair, but your long limbs and quick temper came from Ma.

All four of you took such different pieces of your parents that when you stood together, you looked nothing like siblings. Both Alanig and Avenie had dark golden hair, but Avenie was tall and lithe, and when she walked it was as if she was a bough of willow on a summer breeze, graceful and gently swaying, whereas Alanig looked like an overgrown dwarf. When they stood together one could see that their features came from the same mould, only stretched differently, but when apart nobody would have thought them as similar. Ewen was tall as well (or at least when you were small, but you grew and he stayed). He had disproportionately slender wrists that Avenie often japed to be feminine, yet whenever you wilfully wanted something you would grasp his hand and swing your arms, and your right hand would cover his wrist, and it felt as full and solid as the hilt of your sword. When Ewen smiled, premature lines gathered around his dove grey eyes, warmth catching in the creases of his skin. Nobody knew where Ewen got his beautiful eyes from, only Pa vaguely remembered a great aunt with such grey eyes, but Ewen's eyes were grey like the brushed fur of your friend Seren's dog, or the round plumes of smoke, or the wet mist of the pre-dawn mountains. And you—you weren't tall yet, still wirily youthful, with flushed, soft skin and long hands that had beautiful penmanship. That was what you remembered the clearest from childhood lessons, that your handwriting was superb.

"What happened to your family?" Flanker asked in a moment of uncharacteristic curiosity.

You supposed that if you were him, you would wonder too—you didn't talk about them very often, and you still hadn't shown Flanker their graves. "They died," you said simply.

Flanker ducked his face into his ale and took a longer drink than was necessary. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said mechanically, and you know he didn't know what to say.

"It's okay," you told him, "You can't make it better or worse."

"I wish I could," Flanker said lowly, his eyes emitting a mellow, grey sheen.

You weren't sure if it was the third mead in your belly or his words that made you warm.

At least theirs was a swift death.

You remember the beginning of that day vaguely. The memory was like a picture soggy with water, colour streaking, that you tried to pencil in to the best of your abilities, but you couldn't be sure what was there before and what you made up in order to make a whole picture. But anyway, it was two weeks before you turned fifteen. You had woken up early in the brightening darkness for no reason, and it was a nondescript spring day before spring really turned warm. You were delirious with the thought of becoming a full grown woman, because somehow you didn't quite understand that being a full grown woman was very different from being a full grown man. You slipped out of the house and ran to Lake Libra, even though the water was too cold for swimming, but you jumped in anyway. When you got bored with the water, you shivered your way back in the morning light, the vibrant colours of the sky dimming into white daylight, but you couldn't find your house. Or at least, you didn't understand where your house had gone, because in its place was just rubble everywhere. It was a ruin, but not your house, but this was where it was, so where was it, and what was this wreckage that stood here? You tried to ask Ewen, but of course he wasn't there. It probably wasn't the best choice in retrospect, but you understood when you climbed the debris and among the stone and dirt, you found a hand. The flesh had been scraped off, bone showing through what should have been plump white softness, but around one bloodied skeletal finger, you could make out a wide rose gold ring. Ma's wedding band. Pa had made it for her.

You cried, for days and days. You spent a long time living there, on top of the debris, only scampering off to where the greenhouse used to be to pick some plants and berries when the hunger made you see stars. You still talked to Ewen and Alanig and sometimes even Avenie, and you made them talk back. It felt like a mistake, and you should figure out how to fix it, but of course you were fifteen and old enough to know when something couldn't be fixed.

Later, one of Pa's clients came by to pick up an order for an axe found you.

Even later, you learned that there was a Birdmen attack on the area and six houses were destroyed. The Archmage was beginning to see Analand as a rival and a resource and he sent his most aggressive Birdmen scouts, who frequently saw pillaging to be part of their task.

Even later than that, you apprenticed under a battlemaster and a sorcerer, the best and only one in Gummport. After they ran out of things to teach you, you stuffed everything you owned in a small sack (the clothes on your back, a bracelet that Avenie made you with multicolour threads, two apples, a piece of rock because that was all home was, a Birdman feather next to the rock, a small book which contained your unsent letters to Ewen) and left.

Eventually, you were picked to go on that mission to retrieve the Crown, but for you, it was more than just love for the country—you wanted the Archmage to _pay_ for what he did to your family. To Ma, who was tough but fair and always made the best stews when you were sick and kept your room fresh with flowers; to Pa, who was patience and kindness personified, doting without spoiling; to Alanig, who would have grown to be a pillar of society, the sort of men that others followed without doubt or fear; to Avenie, who tormented men but would have made one very happy some day; to Ewen, sweet Ewen, who would have lain in the backyard forever, chewing a long stalk of reed, weaving nonsense magic from the stars, who promised to take you across Lake Libra someday, to see the world with you, to watch over you in the night so you can sleep without dreams, to let you be his champion for the rest of his life.

"If you want, we could go visit them sometimes," you said. You thought you knew exactly who would have liked Flanker and who wouldn't be able to stand him: Ma would have doted on him, Pa generously welcoming, and Alanig would have been friendly but reserved, whereas Avenie would scoff at him because that was what she did to men, but Ewen—Ewen would have hated him, you were sure. Ewen would have taken petty and escalating vengeances against this man who would replace him by your side. Except that wouldn't have happened, Flanker wouldn't ever replace Ewen, nobody could have, if—

You had to bring your thoughts away from the Archmage though, because he was dead. He was dead and it did not lessen your rage, your pain, your hatred, your need to kill him. He was dead and it did not help with the dreams you didn't wake from fast enough, or the dreams you didn't want to wake from. He was dead and it was almost worse.

Flanker was silent.

"We don't have to, of course," you tried to rectify. It wasn't like there even was a graveyard. The rubble was too much to clean, and in the end the vultures took what was left. You buried a few rocks and Ma's wedding ring in a little plot in a clearing by the lake.

"I do, I want to, or I want to want it," he said long after you thought the conversation had ended. "I just don't know how I can."

You cocked an eyebrow as indication that he should continue, but you knew where this was going.

He bowed his head and his dark locks tumbled down to hide his eyes. "I'm a ghost, a dark shadow that follows you because there is nowhere else to go, and a ghost must haunt someone."

Yup, this again. It might be the fourth mead talking, or the long day's journey, or the long night ahead, or the exhaustion from the last six months, or from the entire fucking quest, or from your entire bloody life catching up to you—but tonight, you weren't taking it.

It had been half a year since the end, since the day the three of you came soaring back to Analand in the claws of a Goldcrest eagle, over the vast lands of the Old World. Your people—the Analanders—were ecstatic to see you. Both Flanker and Jann had trouble adjusting to the unending adoration. Then, after a few weeks, they asked why you destroyed the Crown instead of restoring it to the rightful place, the head of your King ( _our_ King, they emphasized, as if to confirm that you still considered the King yours). Four months in, you stopped being a hero, which was both a disappointment and a relief.

You took up work at a dairy farm just to make the ends meet. It was a strange farm, with a well-ploughed field, a herd of milk cows, and a harras of beautiful white horses that shouldn't exist on a small, lonely farm in the middle of nowhere. The owner of the farm, a man with golden hair and noiseless footsteps, presented Flanker with a set of all black clothes when Flanker slinked in during the night (complete with a black facemask; the owner wasn't even disturbed by the sight of the night intruder with his sword on his right and your curved cutlass on his left). His wife was the most beautiful woman you had ever seen, and it was hard to believe that such beauty was contained on a dairy farm, or indeed was satisfied by it, but she was—she was glowingly happy every day.

You, Flanker, and Jann left after a fortnight. It was impossible to not get embarrassed by the pair's overtly schmaltzy affection for each other. Their daughter gave you some extra gold because she was empathetic to your embarrassment.

You had been on the road ever since.

Flanker tried to take up work, but his only skills were to stalk and kill—he wasn't even a decent fencing master because his sword was meant to harm. You refused to let him slip back into his old habits, not when his assassination guild wasn't aware he was alive. Tabula rasa was hard to come by, and you weren't going to have him waste it. (You had one too, to be fair, and you didn't like it either.)

Jann offered to go about picking pockets. You decided that a full stomach was worth more than moral decency, so you did not object. He went about the business with alarming efficiency, and you wondered what he did before you met him.

But of course you never asked. Just like you never asked who Flanker killed before.

A week ago, you sold your last jewel of gold, and here you were, in a spotty tavern, drinking lukewarm mead, and trying so, so hard not to get angry at Flanker. Again.

"A ghost huh," you said, "ghosts these days sure are warm in bed."

Without his black mask, Flanker's blush flared across his cheeks. You wondered if that was why he always wore one—he blushed so easily, red splotches swelling over his pale cheeks until the base of his earlobes glowed pink like small pearls. Yes, even now, after spending many nights with you in the same bed—but to be fair, Jann was in the same bed too, and it was for economic reasons rather than romantic ones. Your traveling band camped outside more often than not, but when you splurged on an inn, you wanted everyone to have a mattress underneath them.

"I'm tired of this, Flanker," you told him, whose blush quickly died and face turned ghastly, "I can't. I can't anymore."

With that, you stood, drained the last of the mead that you hadn't paid for yet, and flew upstairs to your room.

Jann was asleep in the bed, indeed snoring despite his face being buried into the bed sheet that looked like it would give you fleas. The lantern swaying from the roof channelled dim light through the dusty window, highlighting his scarred back. You restrained your fingers from touching the gnarled tissue where they severed his wings. You felt oddly guilty about it, but of course it was not your fault, just like your family's death wasn't your fault, but you couldn't help the feeling that way about both events. You tried to remember Ewen's kiss on your temple, but the solace came with its price of crushing grief.

A shadow slipped in after you. You were pretty sure you had closed the door behind you, but when was a closed door a closed door to Flanker?

"I can leave if you want," he murmured quietly.

"You know that's not what I meant," you told him resignedly. You couldn't imagine carrying on in this world alone.

He moved up beside you, his movement habitually liquid and soundless. "I know, but I need to be sure."

You made a vague noise that never made it past your teeth.

"The idea of being… wanted is still foreign to me. These things do not come to me naturally."

"I know."

"It might take longer."

"I know."

"But I am a quick learner."

"I _know_ , Flanker," you turn to him, exasperated. "It's not your fault. I'm just taking it out on you."

"I'm honoured to receive your anger."

The lantern did not light up enough of the room, and his face was dark and indiscernible in the small room. Somehow that made you mad.

"But I'm angry _all the time_! Flanker, the Archmage is dead. He's _dead_. That's _it_. My family is still gone. I won't ever see my brother or sister or parents or _Ewen_ ever again. Ever. I spent the last fifteen years learning swords and sorcery to prepare for that one journey, and now that's done. In that process I've destroyed the Ancient World with the bloody beacons, so does that make me the villain? I can't do magic with Jann around. There isn't much need for a sellsword, and I don't want to be one, I don't even _like_ fencing. What do I do with myself? I have no purpose. I need a purpose. And maybe it's those wonky farmers getting to me, but love is as good a purpose for living, isn't it? _Isn't it_? And I think I love you. Or I thought I felt so in the Archmage's tower, I don't know, how does love feel like? But at least you love me; or at any rate a sort of love, which I'm not sure if healthy, but I'll take it anyway. Flanker, I _need_ you to feel okay because that might make me feel okay."

Silence, broken by Jann's snoring and your rasping breath.

"I'm not Flanker," he said eventually.

You clenched your fists and a muscle in your neck popped from the strain. "I swear, if you say _ghost_ just _one_ more—"

"No," he cut you off, which he _never_ did, "I meant that's not my name."

"Oh." Wait, "what?"

"They—my old guild—called me Flanker because that was how I killed. I like flanking targets. Once I realized it was a predictable signature, I changed, but the name stuck around."

"Oh." You couldn't really imagine giving up your name, but it made sense that Flanker—or whoever he was—did.

"My name is Finian. I now know: your entire family died in one day, you trained for fifteen years to kill the tyrant responsible, and now that you have, you do not know who you are."

It seemed unfair that he was so good at summarizing all the tragic things in your life so neatly.

"But I do," he continued, "I know exactly who you are. You are Blossom of Analand."

You cringed. There was a reason why you always introduced yourself as 'Analander'.

But Flan—Finian ignored your facial spasm and took a step towards you. You could only see his eyes (pale grey and gleaming like the thin line of daylight breaking along the horizon) and the bridge of his nose (sharp and cutting like a sword through flesh, a SUN spell amidst dark fog). "And I am Finian of Brice, from the town of Quill, renowned for Quillian Water, which looks, smells, and tastes like water, but kills a man after three small doses. It's a coward's weapon, and I have never used it. I have no mother, no father, no brother or sister. I have no profession now that assassinating others is out of the question. I have neither land nor gold. And I would like to court you, Blossom of Analand, if I may."

It wasn't true love, or the meaning of the universe, but it was a start.

You nodded, took his hand, and the two of you lay down on either side of Jann.

And that would suffice, tonight.


End file.
